Sifting through the dross

Submitted by Rebecca Moulds (United States), Jul 7, 2008 at 08:48

To assume that the higher economic situations and even assimilation of Muslims living in America will stop them from producing terrorists is both naive and dangerous. True, most Muslims in the States do live in the upper to upper middle class neighborhoods, but this is no guarantee that they will be loyal Americans.

Understanding the mind -set of the potential terrorist, and the prevention of terrorist acts is the key to stopping the violence before it begins, but that is where education must step in. We do not know what causes a person to become a terrorist in the first place; the psychological implications are much too complex and individual, but there must be a pattern that develops in the psyche that perhaps differs from normal thought processes. What causes a person to hate enough to drive them to terrorist acts?

Where does one start? Psychoanalyzing is an endless process. We must cast away the assumption that socio-economics are the main cause, so where does that leave us? We cannot predict how many terrorists either America or Europe will produce, wealth or poverty seem to matter little, so the answer is elusive. That leads back to square one, which is that we cannot truly know or stop terrorism, but we do have to try.

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